again a normal thread was polluted by self appointed open source advocates.

Before you ask again nvidia about that, please, do a google source.
Even if nvida want, they can not open the source for their drivers, because their drivers incorporate IP that nvidia licenced from other companys. So bugging them annoys only the persons working on the drivers.

Some people claim, that open source drivers are 'better' than closed one. So please, show me any good open source XFree86 driver. Any.
And do not point at ATI.

bugs, that bothered me years ago, are still there.
Nvidia's drivers does not have such ashaming bugs, like mentioned on that page.
Open source drivers are nice.. if you have specs, and a lot of motivated and talented programmers with a lot of time and hardware.
But where are this wonder-hacker?
They spend their time doing more 'stylish' things (like learning welsh...), or are simple not there (rich and talented and motivated, with a lot of time), I am not convinced that many of them would look at the nvidia-sources. Not so perfect hackers had to do the work.

So we would have to deal with a lot of patch-versions of incomplete and not very tested drivers, instead of a nice and braindead installer (and a really simple README, covering every problem).

Nvidia is the best address to develop nvidia drivers, they have the hardware, the specs and the people to do it. But instead of appreciating their work, some blokes spend their time insulting and annoying everybody. Instead of helping peoples with problems, they are crying around that the driver is not under the licence of the year.
Please, if you want to make your nvidia experience better, go to Xfree86. Help them to make XF86 a little less a big fat lame hog, this will be demanding enough.

Yes, I have some problems with my setup. One problem, but nothing that prevents me from using my hardware in any way I desire (I have to start X two times, nothing compared to total lockups, eh?).

If you want to help nvida making their drivers better, help people with problems, write bug-reports or improve X, but please, stop wasting your time cluttering this forums with your useless demands (or do it per mail, with BORING in the subject, to make it easy for nvidia, to filter them out).

Does Nvidia have a patch section where users can submit patches or other things they write which may benefit the developement of their drivers? Does Nvidia user submitted work into there officicial drivers? Maybe this is the wrong venue but I'm just curious.

I don't think that they would incorporate user patches, because of copyright problems, but hey, they redirect everybody, who needs patches to minion.de, so, to some extend, it is possible to make patches.

I some what agree with him. Maybe nvidia should release detailed specs on their cards though. This way things like freedesktop project will be able to create open source drivers on their own. It would take years of reverse engineering to get even a basic driver working.

>Is there any company which develops 3D accelerated graphics cards and has open source drivers for it ?

Yes. Matrox does, for example. Fairly nice ones too, though their cards aren't nearly as fast as Nvidia's and ATI's. ATI also puts some work into the open source drivers. I don't blame Nvidia for their decision to keep their drivers closed (and as it was stated above, they do have other peoples' IP to protect). They make good drivers... none of the OSS ones even come close performance-wise.

I support open source, I'm a kernel developer. I also support peoples' right to make choices. It's your property, do what you want with it, you know?

I believe that a lot of the "devil's advocates" for non OSS drivers are wrongly equating OSS with (L)GPL'd software. Many in the community (such as myself) would be hapy if they printed out the code, took a black magic marker to the IP protected stuff, and scanned the resulting docs into a PDF. They could claim full copyright and people would still continue to contribute and make suggestions. They call it the "Open-Whoop-Dee-Doo" license.

Heck, at least the modline problems, Xv bluescreen, and 2D rendering speed problems would have been fixed by now (I have not yet tested the 5336 drivers to see if these problems still exist). We'd probably have overscan working for TV-out on older models as well.

Personally, I could care less if they OSS their drivers. I have one monitor, and don't use TVOUT. If NWN runs, and my pr0n doesn't jump around in Mplayer, I couldn't be happier.

> again a normal thread was polluted by self appointed open source advocates.
[ ... ]
> If you want to help nvida making their drivers better, help people with problems, write
> bug-reports or improve X, but please, stop wasting your time cluttering this forums
> with your useless demands (or do it per mail, with BORING in the subject, to make it
> easy for nvidia, to filter them out).

OK smart ass, then -- wether your point/opinion is valid or not -- why the hell didn't they simply EXPLAIN this to me instead of completely ignoring any reference i made to open source?

If they did, i would simply say "ah ok." and that would be the end of it. But until they -at least- respect their customers by not completely IGNORING them, i'll stand my ground.

I paid several hundreds of dollars to nvidia for a graphics card, the least i expect is for it to WORK. If it doesn't, then -at least- having the specs OF WHAT I PAID FOR at hand could help me figure out wtf is wrong.

And there are only drivers for their older cards, not the parhelia, by 'third party' according to their website.

EDIT: whoops followed the wrong link.. but I do not want to registrate only to have a look at their drivers licence... hmm.. Redhat XY... looks binary...

>Heck, at least the modline problems, Xv bluescreen, and 2D rendering speed problems would have been fixed by now (I have not yet tested the 5336 drivers to see if these problems still exist).

ATI opensource drivers have still problems with Xv, overlays etc...

Please, do not think, only because something is 'in the wild' it is ok and will be great. Most opensource projects are... dead. There are some, that are successfull, but if you have a look at sourceforge or freshmeat you will see a lot of dead stuff.

Everybody is bashing nvidia, but still.. where are good opensource 3d drivers for ANY actual hardware? ATI? No. 3Dlabs? No. Matrox? Xabre? No.

ATI released some stuff for one particular graphic card and everybody seems to love them for that, and forget, that the opensource drivers suck like their binary drivers.

Nvidia is not ignoring its linux-costumers like Matrox, SiS/XGI and others, and all they get is whining and bashing.
It would be terrible, if NVIDIA would ignore us, gladly they are working to make the drivers better.

So, if you are not satisfied with your nvidia/linux experience, try something else.. after that you will thank nvidia on your knees for their nice drivers.